Napoleon’s End Game: A Review of The Day
of Waterloo
by Jim Werbaneth
Admiral Togo’s War: A Review of Jack
Greene’s Togo
by Jim Werbaneth
First Steps Toward the Marne:
A Review of Brave Little Belgium
by Jim Werbaneth
Spreading
the Faith: The Why and How of Getting into Miniatures Wargaming
by Jason
Guard
Wargaming’s Problematic Giant: Richard H. Berg (1943-2019)
by
Jim Werbaneth
Delaying Action on the Monocacy: Jubal Early v. Lew
Wallace, in SPI’s Drive on Washington
by Jim Werbaneth
Accepting PayPal! Click
here to order online, and
here for a printable order form.
Visit the Line of Departure Online Features site for FREE articles, scenarios, game supplements and player's aids.
Click Here For Specials On Line of Departure Back Issues and other products.
by Jim Werbaneth
It has been way too long getting Line of Departure going again, as life
didn’t just intervene, it kicked down the door, and sprayed the room with
bullets. This was even before COVID-19 and these
extraordi-nary/unprecedented/challenging, pick a word based on the last TV
commercial that you saw, times.
It really started right after the
previous issue was sent out, and I went to visit my mom in Raleigh. Apparently I
didn’t give the impression of health, as I later found out that a major topic of
family discussion was just how sick Uncle Jim looked. Trust me, you don’t want
to be such a subject; I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a pool going
on when I was going to shed this mortal coil.
I thought that I felt
pretty good, despite being tired an awful lot. However, things can creep up on
you, and they were doing so to me.
Toward the end of August, I had
another series of epi-sodes in which I lost consciousness, after a break of
almost two years. Definitely, I did not feel pretty good, or any other kind of
good. The last one came when I was sitting outside with two high school friends
whom I hadn’t seen in forty years; I felt cold, then a little numb. When I next
opened my eyes, I was hanging out of the right side of a chair, while they
stared at me, and one asked, “What the hell just happened?” Ironically, the
three of us had just been discussing various heart problems, and I provided the
fright of the night.
The following Monday, I got in touch with my
cardiologist and made an appointment. Fortunately, I had had a loop recorder
implanted in my chest twenty months earlier, and the technicians in the office
were able to get a reading on what had happened. Previously, my heart would race
and get out of rhythm, then pump nothing, until the blood could flow back into
one of the chambers. This time, and the previous four, were different. This time
my heart just stopped. The last time, on my friend’s deck, lasted twenty-six
seconds.
It was all quite serious. The first thing was that I had to stop
driving, at least until the problem could be fixed. The surgeon who and
implanted loop recorder recommended that I get a pacemaker. This is actually an
understatement; he had such a sense of urgency that he asked if I’d eaten
breakfast yet. When I said yes, he answered that it was too bad, be-cause if I’d
had an empty stomach, he would have admitted me through an emergency room, and
had done the operation that day.
As it was, I had my procedure on
September 10, 2019, at Butler Memorial Hospital, in Butler, Pennsylvania. It all
went well, as shown by the fact that I’m around to write this. About a month
later too, I was cleared to drive, without the clear and present danger of
fading to black. It was still about four months before I could work out again.
I think I made one mistake though, and that was only taking one day off
work. It wasn’t the day in which I got the pacemaker, but the day after, when I
came home from the hospital. Then it was right back to my online education jobs.
Looking back, I should taken a little longer to get back to work; it wasn’t
major surgery on a level with bypass, but it was still worth more than a single
day away from the grind. Maybe too I might have gotten my energy level back to
the point that I could consistently work on Line of Departure and other
wargame projects.
Mind you, this was all before the onset of coronavirus,
demonstrations against police brutality, and maybe most disturbing of all, the
Antifa/anarchist insurgency. And yes, that is exactly how I see it, an uprising
by a radical minority against American values, symbolism and institutions,
unchecked and barely resisted by those charged with protecting them. It is
certainly a bad time to be an American, or an historian, part of this
insurrection is directed against history itself. In fact, I wonder when this
hybrid of the Paris Commune and the Great Cultural Revolution is going to come
for wargaming. If Washington and Jefferson are not safe from the mob, then why
should we and our games fare any better?
Issue 83 of Line of
Departure, here at long last, includes not one, not two, but three reviews.
For the first time in way too long, these will cover games on the Napoleonic
Wars and World War I. Also, this issue’s lead review, on The Day of Waterloo,
might be about one of the marquee battles of all time, but it sets itself off
from the other Napoleonic articles in the magazine so far is that the game is
designed by Ed Wimble, of Clash of Arms fame. The others covered in Line of
Departure have tended to be designed by Kevin Zucker, arguably the most
prolific and important designer of wargames on the era. It is as hard to deal
with Napoleonic games without Kevin Zucker, as would be to cover the Battle of
the Bulge without Danny Parker.
World War I returns with a review of
Brave Little Belgium, the first title from Hollandspiele to be reviewed
here. The third review is of Togo, Jack Greene’s tactical naval game on
Tsushima, and other battles of the Russo-Japanese War, from his own Quarterdeck
International. Also, there is an analysis of the Drive on Washington,
the SPI game on the Battle of Monocacy Junction, using the first incarnation of
the Great Battles of the American Civil War system. Strangely, and
through no design of my own, Civil War games have been missing from the
magazine’s pages for a while. Here, they turn, and will be addressed more in the
coming editions.
Jason Guard returns with another article on miniatures
gaming; it won’t be the last either. It demonstrates too that Line of
Departure will be addressing a wider range of games and game types, while
remaining firmly rooted in historical board wargming.
Finally, there is
my short feature on the legacy of the late Richard Berg. He was a Famous Game
Designer, but… Well, you’ll have to read the article to find out.
Also, I
would like to thank all of the subscribers for your patience through these
extraordinary/unprecedented/challenging times, starting with my own 2019 from
hell; at least it prepared me for everyone’s 2020 from hell’s hidden
subbasement. I’m not going to just say thanks though. As Issue 83 goes out the
door, I will be extending the subscriptions of every existing subscriber, at
that point by one issue. A lot of times customers will ask me what is their last
issue. This time around at least, the answer is not right now. Of course I’ll
accept renewals, it would be stupid not to. However, your reception of Issue 84
will not be dependent on that.
Consider that extra issue to be my gift to
the subscribers, for their patience.
.
RETURN TO LINE OF DEPARTURE HOME PAGE